THIERRY HENRY INTERVIEW

Thierry Henry has become the best-paid pundit in English football by a distance after joining Sky Sports as a football expert and ambassador from the start of next year.

His pay packet is said to dwarf that of Sky colleague Gary Neville, who is believed to be paid £1.2million a year.

The terms of Henry’s mega-deal still allow him to work for the BBC at major tournaments, as he did during Brazil last summer. But he is not permitted to work for Sky’s arch-rivals BT Sport, who were also keen on signing him.

Thierry Henry has become the best-paid pundit in English football by a distance after joining Sky Sports

Henry's pay packet is said to dwarf that of Gary Neville (right), who is believed to be paid £1.2million a year

Henry has shelved his coaching ambitions to accept a six-year deal with Sky, worth £4m a year.

After two decades scoring goals, the 37-year-old Frenchman said: ‘It feels like a logical step. It gives me the possibility to stay close to the game and help people understand it better.’

He has in the past spoken of his desire to coach, and Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said the door would always be open for him at Arsenal.

Henry added: ‘That is the plan, to go through that process, but we are far from that at the moment. Everyone is busy at Arsenal and nobody is going to stop what they’re doing for me.’

Henry moved from Juventus to Arsenal in August 1999 for a fee of about £11m under Arsene Wenger

The French striker played for Monaco, Juventus, Arsenal, Barcelona and New York Red Bulls during an illustrious career, scoring a total of 360 goals in 792 appearances.

He also played for France on 123 occasions, scoring 51 times.

Henry lifted the Premier League title twice and the FA Cup three times before adding the Champions League with Barcelona in 2009.

He also won the World Cup with France in 1998 and the European Championship in 2000.

Sport England are understood to have spent more than £2m setting up the ‘spogo’ website as a tool to help browsers find local sports clubs. But just two years later, the site is being merged with a London 2012 legacy initiative Be Inspired because hardly anyone was using the Sport England facility.

This extravagance follows the eye-popping £3m a year Sport England spent on their Active People Survey, the expensive findings from which have been delayed because of botched data research.

A Sport England spokesman said: ‘We believe the website merger makes sense because we can bring together facilities and people to better effect, and the APS research is critical to our funding decisions.’

The BBC’s website made its contribution to the general unease that has greeted the overwhelming size of Lewis Hamilton’s victory over favourite Rory McIlroy in the Sports Personality of the Year vote.

The first news the Beeb put up online after the votes were counted was that McIlroy had won. A spokesman said: ‘It was human error and was taken down immediately.’

The BBC mistakenly put online that Rory McIlroy (right) had won Sports Personality of the Year rather than actual winner Lewis Hamilton (pictured centre next to third-placed Jo Pavey)

Paul McGinley, who was widely praised for his Ryder Cup captaincy, is already starting to prepare meticulously for leading Ireland’s 2016 Olympic golf challenge, including visits to the unfinished course in Rio.

The professional focus of McGinley, who took a tour of the FA’s St George’s Park just to keep abreast of coaching ideas, contrasts with the shambolic British entry into rugby sevens that will not even name a manager until next year.

The departure from the FA of Club England managing director Adrian Bevington has been inevitable since technical director designate Dan Ashworth announced his vision to the FA board after the World Cup.

Ashworth’s presentation of his ‘England DNA’ blueprint for national teams was well received and allowed him effectively to take charge of the future direction of England football from St George’s Park.

Bevington, who was also impressed by Ashworth’s talk, realised Club England — which he had led since its formation in 2010 — had been kicked into the long grass and it crystallised his desire to leave the FA.

The departure from the FA of Club England managing director Adrian Bevington had been inevitable

Bevington declared before the World Cup that his ambition is to be a club chief executive and had always seen 2014 as his likely leaving date.

A negotiated settlement gives him time to find the right football post. But he will have no difficulty picking up a top PR job after his consummate work in his other role as FA director of communications handling crisis after crisis at Wembley.

Bevington’s Club England post has been made virtually redundant, meaning the replacement for general secretary Alex Horne, who will leave at the end of next month, will have to involve himself closely with England matters.

Bevington shows UEFA President Michel Platini around St Georges Park during a visit last month

Meanwhile, the pressure is now firmly on Greg Dyke, not the easiest FA chairman to work with, to steady the ship following the exits of Horne and Bevington in quick succession.

Members of FIFA’s executive committee, led by Germany’s Theo Zwanziger, calling for Michael Garcia’s World Cup corruption report to be published in full will find their cause made that much harder by the FIFA appeals committee rejecting Garcia’s complaint that the summary of his report was ‘incomplete and erroneous’.

The appeal was considered inadmissible because by the statement by ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert was not legally binding, and thus not subject to appeal. Typical FIFA dysfunctionality.